Chronic depression affects about 20 percent of Nigerian heads of households, according to the most recent results of the Nigerian General Household Survey (GHS) Panel, which measures indicators from agriculture, welfare, and other areas of life in Nigeria once every two to three years. This statistic is linked to an additional finding that nearly 2 out of 5 Nigerian respondents have been affected by at least one negative event, such as conflict and/or the death of a household member.

We learned that from potatoes and waste recycling in Lebanon to aquaculture and poultry in Zambia, it is possible to have a standardized base guideline; however, the methodology still needs to be adjusted for specific economic, political and social contexts. (Photo: Dominic Chavez / World Bank)

There is a well-known idiom saying that you can't compare apples and oranges. But this is precisely the challenge researchers often face when it comes to measuring the jobs impact of development projects. Having standardized impact evaluation tools and methods is a milestone for private sector-led job investments, and it allows international financial institutions, development practitioners, and governments to build on existing knowledge to develop solutions. And this is precisely one of the goals that Let's Work partnership, composed of 30 different institutions, is currently pursuing; to track the number of jobs generated from private sector-led interventions, the quality of those jobs, and how inclusive those jobs are in a standardized way, so apples are compared to apples and oranges to oranges.

The Internet of Things (IoT) heralds a new world in which everything (well, almost everything) can now talk to you, through a combination of sensors and analytics. Cows can tell you when they’d like to be milked or when they’re sick, plants can tell you about their soil conditions and light frequency, your fridge can tell you when your food is going bad (and order you a new carton of milk), and your elevator can tell you how well it’s functioning.

At the World Bank, we’re looking at all these things (Things?) from a development angle. That’s the basis behind the new report, “Internet of Things: The New Government to Business Platform”, which focuses on how the Internet of Things can help governments deliver services better. The report looks at the ways that some cities have begun using IoT, and considers how governments can harness its benefits while minimizing potential risks and problems.

In short, it’s still the Wild West in terms of IoT and governments. The report found lots of IoT-related initiatives (lamppost sensors for measuring pollution, real-time transit updates through GPS devices, sensors for measuring volumes in garbage bins), but almost no scaled applications. Part of the story has to do with data – governments are still struggling how to collect and manage the vast quantities of data associated with IoT, and issues of data access and valuation also pose problems.

Here is a selected round-up of recent research on education in low- and middle-income countries, with a few findings from high-income countries that I found relevant. This is mostly but not entirely from the “economics of education” literature. If I’m missing recent articles that you’ve found useful, please add them in the comments!

What is education good for?

Education saves lives, but only some of them! “Education is strongly associated with better health and longer lives.” But is that mere correlation, or is a causal link? It depends! This review finds no impact on obesity, inconsistent impact on smoking, and “an effect of education on mortality exists in some contexts but not in others, and seems to depend on (i) gender; (ii) the labor market returns to education; (iii) the quality of education; and (iv) whether education affects the quality of individuals’ peers” (Galama, Lleras-Muney, and van Kippersluis).

The Mataniko River floodplain at Koa Hill, Solomon Islands, after the April 2014 flood. Many houses were completely washed away and several lives were lost. (Photo: Alan McNeil, Solomon Islands government)

‘Are we there yet?’ On a long road trip, perhaps you’ve asked or heard this question.

Let’s direct this question to the state of urban flood risk management in Pacific Island countries. In this case, the ‘destination’ is flood-resilient communities.

For Pacific Island countries, no, we’re not there yet, but are we heading in the right direction?

As we approach the 9th World Urban Forum in Kuala Lumpur next week, one of the essential challenges in implementing the New Urban Agenda that governments are struggling with is the provision at scale of high quality affordable housing, a key part of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11 of building sustainable cities and communities.

When I worked on affordable housing in Latin America, one consistent piece of advice we would give our clients was that it is not a good idea for governments to build and provide housing themselves. Instead, in the words of the famous (and sadly late) World Bank economist Steve Mayo, we should enable housing markets to work. Our clients would always respond by saying, “But what about Singapore?” And we would say the Singapore case is too sui generis and non-replicable.

Singapore’s governing philosophy has famously been described as “think ahead, think again and think across.” Nowhere is this more apparent than how the founding fathers designed the national housing program, and how it has adapted and evolved over the years, responding to changed circumstances and needs.

The composition of wealth fundamentally changes with economic development. Natural capital—energy, minerals, land and forests—is the largest component of wealth in low-income countries. Its value goes up, but its share of total wealth decreases as economies develop. By contrast, the share of human capital, estimated as the present value of future incomes for the labor force, increases as economies develop. Overall, human capital accounts for two-thirds of the wealth of nations. Read more in The Changing Wealth of Nations

Global wealth grew by 66% between 1995 and 2014 to a total of over 1,140 Trillion dollars. The share of the world’s wealth held by middle-income countries is growing — it increased from 19% to 28% between 1995 and 2014, while the share of high-income OECD countries fell from 75% to 65%. Read more in The Changing Wealth of Nations

Cities across Nepal—and in the developing world—produce more waste than ever before, due to a spike in population and a surge in new economic activity and urbanization. Properly disposing and managing solid waste has thus become urgent for city municipalities.

As a result, landscapes and public spaces in Nepal’s urban centers are deteriorating. Less than half of the 700,000 tons of waste generated in Nepal’s cities each year is collected. Most waste is dumped without any regulation or oversight and several municipalities do not have a designated disposal site, leading to haphazard disposal of waste—often next to a river—further aggrevating the problem.

With urbanization rising, the costs of inaction are piling up and compromising people’s health and the environment. In most cases, the poor suffer the most from the resulting negative economic, environmental, and human health impacts.

Back in March 2017, the European Union Commission announced a public consultation about a possible introduction of cash payment limitations (CPL). This follows the adoption of an action plan dated 2.2.2016 “against the financing of terrorism”. This action plan suggests that because “payments in cash are widely used in the financing of terrorist activities” we should explore “the relevance of potential upper limits to cash payments”.